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Childhood activities reveal early signs of what gives life meaning.

Flow in kids shows a natural, process-oriented form of purpose.

Revisiting childhood interests can uncover purpose anchors.

People often ask me how to find their purpose. My answer rarely changes: you don’t find purpose... you build it. But that doesn’t mean we start from nothing. Most of us already carry clues about what lights us up. I call these clues purpose anchors: the interests, curiosities, and small sparks that quietly pull us toward meaning.

The challenge isn’t creating purpose from thin air. The challenge is remembering what those anchors are. In previous posts, I’ve written about what I call the spaghetti method. The idea is simple: throw a bunch of spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks. Try things. Experiment. Notice what energizes you and what falls flat. Over time, patterns start to emerge.

But there is another way to uncover purpose anchors, and in some ways it is even simpler. Instead of looking forward, you look backward, specifically to childhood.

For many people, childhood represents the closest we ever come to effortless purpose. It’s a time before society pushes us toward a specific training program, career path, or set of daily obligations. Before résumés and responsibilities, we are mostly guided by curiosity.

Give a child a free afternoon and watch what happens. They jump on their bikes, shoot basketballs in the driveway, or build elaborate forts in the backyard. Often they become so absorbed in these activities that they lose track of time. Dinner gets forgotten. The outside world fades away.

Psychologists call this state flow—the experience of becoming so deeply engaged in something that........

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